Teaching the World with WIRC is a new webinar series for K-14 educators interested in integrating global perspectives on a central theme in their curriculum. Presented by members of UW-Madison’s Wisconsin International Resource Consortium, the theme for 2026-2027 is The World in 1776.
About the webinar: Kicking off on Sept. 29 during International Education Week, UW-Madison Associate Professor of Slavic Languages and Literature Kirill Ospovat will discuss several intertwined developments within the Russian Empire and in its foreign policy and military expansion at the time of the American Declaration of Independence. Participants will hear about the massive Pugachev Rebellion (1773-1775), an uprising of Cossacks, Russian peasants, and colonized Muslim groups against the imperial center; administrative reforms that followed the suppression of the uprising and included the abolition of Ukrainian rights of autonomy within the imperial order; reactions of Catherine the Great’s government to the American Revolutionary War; and Russia’s original conquest of Crimea in 1783. Time will be reserved for Q&A and participant discussion of strategies for integrating the webinar information and recommended resources in their teaching.
Click Here for More Information and to Register for the Webinar
About the speaker: Kirill Ospovat is an associate professor of Slavic Languages and Literature at UW–Madison. He is the author of The Pugachev Rebellion: The Political Semiotics of Revolt in the Age of Enlightenment (An Essay in Democratic Historiography) (Moscow: OGI, 2026) and two books on eighteenth-century Russian culture and literature: Courtly Letters: Russian Literature and Visions of Absolutism in the Mid-Eighteenth Century (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2020), and Terror and Pity: Aleksandr Sumarokov and the Theater of Power in Elizabethan Russia (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2016).
Education Standards: This year’s Teaching the World with WIRC webinar series supports the America250 Wisconsin Commission and Act 95 requirements for educational programming commemorating the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States.
Accessibility Accommodations: If you have any questions about accessibility or wish to request accommodations, please contact wirc@iris.wisc.edu. Typically, a two weeks’ notice will allow us to provide access.
